Page 65 of The Stars are Dying

The obvious didn’t need to be spoken, but I gave a bow of my head regardless.

“You may see more of him during your time here. However long.”

My nerves were teetering on a razor’s edge. I thought Drystan’s assessment was like his father’s, but without the missing piece. He smiled, appearing warm, welcoming. I wanted to feel it, but I listened to the note of caution that arose from within.

“Join us,” the king announced, more to the servants, who began to move, pulling out the vacant seats to our left.

“We don’t wish to put you off your fine meal in our…current state,” I said. Blood crusted on my fingers, and it was an effort not to wretch at the memory of Zathrian gutting the rabbit. All for this display, in the hope it would gain us some respect from the others when everything about me otherwise was sure to pin me as a target.

“Nonsense,” the king said, more cheerful than expected as he took his seat again. “I’m sure there are none here who could be put off by the sight of blood.”

I had no choice but to nod in acceptance and follow a kind woman with straight black hair, braided to the side, and beautiful large eyes, who offered the only warmth in the room. She took my bow, pack, and cloak, and I slid into the seat that was offered to me, but I wanted nothing more than for the back of the chair to open into a depthless void and drop me into the abyss for how singled-out I looked with such elegance surrounding me.

At the thought, I glanced across the space to the seat opposite and turned to stone as I found the woman’s keen gaze already upon me. She was breathtakingly stunning, and as I knew, there was only one other female Selected. Her name was Rosalind. Her light pink hair was wonderful with its natural curls, two sections pinned high and adorned with gold accessories that reminded me of Lilith’s delicate horns. The lengths flowed to her ribs, complementing her glowing brown skin. Though my admiration dissipated to cold dread as the assessment in her light brown eyes chilled me.

“Please, let us resume the feast,” the king said as a command for chatter to fill the awkward silence.

I looked away from Rosalind as the group became loud once more, toward a man further to her right whom I dreaded ever having to go against in combat with his brute size. An angry scar paled his tanned skin, starting at his temple, trailing under an eye patch, and ending right before his mouth. He could be Draven from the Selected profiles I’d studied—one whose best skill was the impressive weight he could lift.

Another Selected—Enver, I thought—I wished to never have to outsmart. There was a cunning gleam in his green irises, and his cropped blond locks made his angled, pale, and slim features all the more conniving. He studied me from head to toe as if I were an item on the menu.

Then, finally, the man reclining lazily in his seat had to be Arwan, the most bored-looking man in the room and the only one still picking at the grapes in front of him. My heart lurched at the sight of his rugged red hair, but his resemblance to Hektor was quickly wiped when he lifted his brown eyes to me around sharper features.

There was nowhere to land my attention that didn’t prick my skin with nerves. I didn’t need to meet the prince’s gaze; I was already rattling with an odd awareness of it.

It wasn’t by choice but default that my stare slipped back to Rosalind. She picked up her cup, sipping carefully, but I felt the mark she made of me. While the men looked at me as bait to crush, capture, and best, I couldn’t shake my unease that Rosalind was studying me carefully, with an attention that picked apart my exterior piece by piece. I schooled my face, distracted my gaze, and wondered with a shock of incredulity that struck me far too late…

What the fuck did I think I was doing?

“Eat, Cassia,” Zathrian said, playing along with the name in our company. He reached over me to spear some meat onto his plate, but I had no appetite. “Despite what he might say, the game starts now.”

20

The rooms they gave me were too much, even more than what I was used to at Hektor’s manor, and I tried not to look at the huge canopied bed behind me. I wasn’t enamored by any of the lavish furnishings or expensive wears and saw them as nothing more than feeble attempts to pamper a lamb before its slaughter.

The following day I stood gazing at the sky, welcoming a new dawn, when the sight brought forth one set of eyes I couldn’t shake from the forefront of my mind.

“You made it,”Nyte said in my thoughts.

“You didn’t,” I replied, though I didn’t particularly long for his physical presence in these rooms. His intrusion both ways was starting to become eerilyexpected.

“I’m right here.”

I looked over the courtyard from my viewpoint, my gaze landing on a circular building at the end of a long path with grass on either side. My lips parted and my spine curved to a touch that didn’t exist.

“Do you know anything of the Libertatem…the trials I could face?” I’d hardly rested for more than a few hours in turmoil at the end of the grueling feast, where I’d been circled by vultures that picked at me with their eyes as much as their mouths did the delicious food.

“From this moment on, you have to play as if every step beyond this room is a step onto a new game board. You might find the Libertatem isn’t the only trial you’ll face here.”

That was nothing of an assurance. I was grateful for the insight, the warning, but it was not what I expected. How could I prepare when nothing about the trials was disclosed beforehand?

“I’m afraid,” I admitted.

“Good,”he said with no teasing.“It is your fear that will keep you wanting to survive.”

“For that to happen…the others must die.” I didn’t know them, but one life for the price of four was a burden that could taint any soul enough to beg for death.

“Better them than you.”

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